Beastmancer

This post is from the now defunct website “A GameDev Plays…”, copied here for posterity

A new turn-based indie monster battler is in development. Does
Beastmancer show promise? It
is still very early days (alpha demo!) and can only get better, but is
already looking great.

An important part of developing a game is gathering feedback on how it
plays. Sometimes this can be hard as an indiedev, and so the solo
developer of Beastmancer released an alpha demo free on IndieDB. In the
game the player collects fantastical beasts and then uses them in
turn-based battles against other beasts. Sort of like Pokemon, but more
JRPG’ish. The game is surprisingly playable considering its early stage.
And looks quite good with cell-shaded graphics and many animations
(although a few more in the fights are needed). There are a few issues
to be ironed out. Saving/loading does not work and there are long load
times (at least on my old’ish PC). The battles lack a certain oomph,
there are few special attacks and mostly it is just charge and bash.
Lastly, the story is too dominant and the maps too big, meaning that
there is little fighting and lots of listening/running around. I look
forward to seeing how it progresses.